Grace Dent reviews Chop Shop

This week Grace and Flavour was off to Haymarket, an unappetising crevice of the capital where suddenly lovely, appealing London turns into Ripley’s Believe It Or Not!, naff shops selling Union Jack snow globes, a six-lane traffic jam and the hell-pit that is Tiger Tiger, a place in which the clientele could only be improved if after 8pm each night a live, hungry tiger was let loose. It also holds the offices of my esteemed literary agency, Curtis Brown, where I’m often spotted weeping about the deadline of my next novel, pleading extreme flat-out busyness, only to be Instagrammed 30 minutes later knocking back really strong Moscow Mules at Berners Tavern with my eyes spinning like Mr Bean trying to programme a sat nav.

I do not generally eat dinner in Haymarket as it is full of people from Idaho in fanny packs making a colossal fuss out of pronouncing ‘Leicester Square’, but I am told it’s due for a £500 million regeneration to make it pretty, pedestrianised and loveable. The first signs of the restyling include new restaurant the Chop Shop which is, let’s be honest, another awful restaurant name — not quite ‘chip shop’, almost ‘Quality Chop House’, winding up sounding like a ‘snazzy’, budget Basildon hair boutique. It makes Prawn on the Lawn in Islington sound like a good idea.

Regardless, there is some very good food on offer at the Chop Shop — the name refers to the venue’s butcher’s-shop concept — once one has navigated the menu. It is divided into ‘planks’, ‘crocks’, ‘jars’, ‘bites’ and a variety of other words not generally recognised across planet Earth as ‘stages of dinner’, but instead ‘random words you might shout during charades’. Yes, there are good hanger steaks, Barnsley chops and dry-aged burgers available, so there is an allusion to some chopping, but this isn’t nose-to-tail St John-style eating as the name suggests. Additionally the venue doesn’t resemble a butcher’s — it is, in fact, a romantically lit bistro — but let’s not dwell any further on the concept because it makes me as confused as the owners.

My guest and I shared two ‘jars’, both delicious: a ricotta and butternut caponata, and a smoked trout with green olives and sour cream. Personally, I am over eating out of a jar, but chefs will insist on making diners resemble a room of Winnie the Pooh impersonators. I cannot fight against this trend alone. I am but one woman with a laptop and, besides, I’m currently working on destroying the ‘small plates’ and ‘no reservations’ trend.

We drank some very good Passione Arrabiata cocktails with reposado tequila and chilli and shared a damn excellent cottage pie made with slow-cooked oxtail ragu, topped with spinach gnocchi, béchamel and breadcrumbs. This dish is sitting on the ‘crocks’ section and pushed as a starter but really should be a signature main. We ordered a fine patty melt sandwich on toasted caraway bread and a plate of chicken roasted with Tuscan panzanella and caramelised onions in thyme jus. Sides of honey roasted carrots and the straightforwardly titled ‘baked cheesy leeks’ were both inhaled.

All of my dinner at the Chop Shop was marvellous, despite none of it really flowing as a meal, although we did put a definite full stop at the end with the Chop Shop Brownie Sundae with vanilla gelato, warm peanut butter sauce and a smattering of salted peanuts. I have thought long about the concept of the Chop Shop and have decided it is basically ‘Come here, we’re on Haymarket but we’re actually lovely. We will fill your stomach’, which if you think about it, isn’t a bad state of affairs in the slightest.